Myth reaches a modern medium
By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer
The story of Pele and Hi'iaka, the goddess sisters whose intense bond finally combusts in a fiery paroxysm of rage and jealousy, is as compelling and poetic a tale as any of the great epics of Western literature.
"Great Performances" photo
"Holo Mai Pele" Film screening, with a performance by Halau o Kekuhi and commentary 7 p.m. Friday Hawai'i Theatre $30 ($10 discount for students and seniors, $15 discount for groups of 10 or more) 528-0506
Of course, only a very select group, the inner circle of the hula world, can appreciate it sufficiently, knowing its dance variations and the subtleties of the text. Most people, including many Island residents as well as those on the Mainland, can't appreciate it at all.
Halau o Kekuhi performed "Holo Mai Pele" last July for the cameras of "Great Performances," the Public Broadcasting Service series. The one-hour production is to air nationally in October. Hawai'i audiences will have a chance to watch the film in a screening in Honolulu on Friday.
That's about to change, owing principally to the work of filmmaker Catherine Tatge and kumu hula Pualani Kanaka'ole Kanahele and Nalani Kanaka'ole. Their finished work, "Holo Mai Pele," three years in the making, will have its premiere in a screening Friday at the Hawai'i Theatre (see box). The event is a fund-raiser for Pacific Islanders in Communications, which supports public broadcasting programs by and about Pacific Islanders and Hawai'i.
But the audience will grow exponentially sometime in October, Tatge said, when PBS is due to air the one-hour film as part of the "Great Performances" series.
Tatge, producer and director of the film, condensed the three-hour hula pageant of the same title that played stages throughout Hawai'i beginning in 1995. It was a job that required intensive collaboration between Tatge, who knew the language of film, and the Kanaka'ole sisters, conversant in the symbolism of chant.
"I've been involved with nothing quite like this before," Tatge said in a telephone interview. "This was for me a high point because I enjoyed the collaboration with Pua and Nalani.
"The questions were really about the symbolism of the work," she added. "How would you represent Pele, for example? We were trying to understand the visuals, the things relating to nature. That took a long time to get that right."
"Holo Mai Pele" tells about one particular journey by of Hi'iaka, the youngest sister of the volcano goddess Pele. Hi'iaka's role within the Hawaiian religion is tied to plantings; where Pele would create new land in the form of barren lava fields, Hi'iaka would seed the fields with life. The lehua, with its feathery red and yellow blossoms, is particularly dear to Hi'iaka.
So when Hi'iaka traveled to Kaua'i to locate Pele's lover Lohi'au, she did so under one condition: that Pele vow to protect her cherished fields of lehua.
The odyssey is brought to life by dancers in the Kanaka'oles' Hilo-based hula school, Halau O Kekuhi. Tatge, whose crew spent two weeks last summer shooting in Hilo and at a Honolulu staged performance, intersperses footage of interviews and practices at the halau with selected scenes from the epic. These passages are often illuminated further through subtitling; writer Mahealani Dudoit edited the chant translations so that the essential meaning would come through in the titles. The viewer's experience is something like watching an opera televised, with its libretto appearing beneath the stage action.
The kumu hula, who shepherd the halau that their mother and grandmother taught before them, came to Honolulu about two weeks ago for a preview screening, both said they feel very satisfied by the results of their work. There had been some misgivings about turning over their choreographed dramatization of classic chants to noninitiates, but fears were soon alleviated, Kanahele said.
"What we had doubts about was taken care of right away," she said. "It was the relationship we would have with the photographer and director... that they might see something that's totally different from what we see.
"We wanted them to catch the spiritual as well as the physical."
Their worries abated once meetings began with Tatge and her crew, including chief videographer Tom Hurwitz, continuing over the past two years.
The first year of preparations involved finding the money and securing the commitment of "Great Performances," said Carlyn Tani, who, as executive producer of Pacific Islanders in Communications, was the primary mover behind the drive to televise "Holo Mai Pele."
Supplementing the program will be publication of a companion book of all the chants used in the film, in their unedited form, along with explanatory notes, Tani said. This book is due out in September.
The preview screening ended in enthusiastic applause, but nobody feels certain how the show will play to middle America.
Tatge feels fairly confident, however that the sense of the work will emerge.
"My hope is that this is a program the audience will feel comfortable with," she said. "I wanted to present it in a way that respected the work of art because I think it is a great work of art."
This is why, she said, the performance is interrupted by only enough interview segments to explain certain basic hula conventions, allusions to nature and so on.
Nalani Kanaka'ole, who said she at first fretted over the notion of winnowing a three-hour production by two-thirds, added that she was impressed by the care that was taken in editing.
"What was awesome was the director spent a lot of time reviewing the tapes (of the earlier production)," she said. "She spent a lot of time with us even before we started shooting. She went through every detail of the whole script."
Everything was negotiable, too. When a scene about an 'awa drinking ceremony was slated for the cutting-room floor, the kumu hula argued for its retention, Kanaka'ole said, because "it was a basis for showing the audience how the people actually get on the level with their gods."
Other finer points: A shot of a bird sipping nectar was planned so it would depict a lehua blossom and not just any flower, Tatge said.
This attentiveness has left the kumu hula with smiles, but the general public may derive their enjoyment from something less concrete. Dudoit said the film captured the intense emotion of its production.
"When I watch it, I can feel the energy that was being felt by the performers," she said said. "That's what might benefit a perceptive non-Hawaiian audience."
Vicki Viotti can be reached at 525-8053 or e-mail vviotti@honoluluadvertiser.com.
